Category: News

David Oyelowo’s directorial debut, The Water Man (which just had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival) feels like a throwback. It’s about a kid, Gunner (Lonnie Chavis) who goes on a great quest to find the mythical man/creature known as The Water Man, who is said to possess healing powers, in an effort to save his mother (Rosario Dawson) who is dying. It’s got that adventure and spirit of some of the great kid adventure movies of the ’80s, the kind we don’t really see anymore. And that’s not an accident.

Oyelowo spent a good portion of his youth in Nigeria where he didn’t have access to a lot of the big films of the ’80s, but when his family returned to the UK in 1989, he devoured them. So his influences range from a lot of movies you’d expect – E.T., The Goonies, Stand By Me, The NeverEnding Story – and maybe one you might not expect, namely the 1987 Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall supernatural romantic comedy, Mannequin.

Ahead, Oyelowo (who has the reputation of being just one of the nicest people in the industry, which I try to convey in the story that starts this interview) explains that a big reason he wanted to make The Water Man is because there just aren’t a lot of movies today made in the same vein as those ’80s classics, and he wanted to make a new one for his kids. And, of course, he also explains just why, when he was a kid, he loved Mannequin so much.

I’ve only met you once before and it was the weirdest thing.

Okay?

It was Sundance 2019. And we were waiting to cross the street. And you knew someone I was with and he did a quick introduction…

Right.

I think I said, “Oh, your first movie.” And I meant first movie of that Sundance. And you say yes, then felt compelled to clarify, “Not my first movie ever, I’ve seen movies.”

[Laughing] Right right.

And I’m like, “No. I know you’ve seen movies.” And then you went further, saying you’ve been to Sundance before, too. Anyway, that’s been our only interaction.

[Laughs] Oh, I’m so glad we got to clear that up. So yes, we can fix things now, Mike.

I remember that whole movie thinking, “Oh my God, does David Oyelowo think I thought he never saw a movie before?”

Oh, dear. Be rest assured I didn’t think that’s what you were thinking. But I’m glad to clear it up.

Though it would be something if you hadn’t, and now you decided to direct one. Because most people watch them first before they start directing.

[Laughs] I’d say it’s a good idea to do that.

I don’t know how many more interviews you have left, but I know you’ve been asked a lot, “Why are you directing now?” And you should say, “Well, I finally watched one and I wanted to make one.”

[Laughing] It would certainly break things up. Oh my goodness.

You said a big reason you wanted to make The Water Man is because you grew up watching movies like Stand By Me and Goonies and they don’t really exist anymore. Which is probably why those two movies are still popular, because there aren’t really new ones to replace them.

Very good point. I don’t know if you have children yourself, but I do. And I think that’s the reason I really noticed it – especially in this time where we’re all home a little bit more and you crave escapism, entertainment, stories to help sort of switch off some of the really quite difficult stuff we’re going through right now. I think what’s starting to happen in my business, in the entertainment business, is that power is being taken away by a small group of cultural curators who are deciding what we should and should not see, what we want and do not want. And, one of the great things about the streamers is that they have sort of democratized, in a sense, what it is audiences are having available to them.

You say cultural curators. Are you just talking about studio heads specifically? Or is it a wider swath of people?

I’m talking about studio heads primarily. I’m talking about people who have green-light power. People who can decide what gets made or what doesn’t. What gets the big marketing budget or what doesn’t. The streamers operate in a slightly different model. They are gravitating towards diverse content. They are gravitating towards content that is headed up by women, made by women; fronted by women in front of and behind the camera. They’re gravitating towards things that are international: All things that studios traditionally shy away from. “Black doesn’t travel” has been an awful phrase that has been Hollywood’s dirty secret for a while or not so secret.

I’d agree it’s not so secret.

Yeah. And it’s just patently not true. But while you still have that old model, old mindset, old mentality curating the culture, we’re not going to move forward as quickly as that it seems we all want to.

Do you think with people being at home has pushed things forward at a quicker rate? They tried butting a movie in theaters in the United States and it didn’t work.

Well, I wouldn’t use the phrase, push things forward. I would just say it’s a restructure, and it’s a refreshing restructuring. There are plenty of wonderful things about studio movies. And I’ve loved watching Marvel movies, Disney movies, Star Wars. I love watching the big tent-pole movies in a movie theater. I craved that experience. I longed for it to return. But those films are a very small section of what I think an audience is craving. I mean, what we’ve tried to do with The Water Man is to make a family film that doesn’t shy away from tougher scenes, while still being adventurous and exciting. A film like The Water Man, you could argue, wouldn’t exist unless there was a restructuring. Because the sheer amount of money you have to spend to corral the audience’s attention when you’re competing with a Marvel movie is twice, maybe three times the budget of what you made the film for. That doesn’t make any business sense.

The movies that influenced The Water Man. I’m curious when you saw those, because it looks like in your age range those came out you would have been in Nigeria then? Did you see those when you were living there?

I saw some of them there, but I saw most of them when I moved back to the UK. I lived in Nigeria from the age of 6 to 13. But in that period particularly, because to be honest, the range of movies I was exposed to in Nigeria was limited. And so when I came to the UK in ’89, I consumed films I had missed. And films that were still coming out at that point. A lot of them made by Amblin. And I remember I can picture the VHS, how worn out they were. I mean, I would have to rewrite E.T. on to the VHS so many times because it got worn out. I did it in pencil, I did it in pen, I did it in a marker – I watched it that many times! So, it was films like that. And Gremlins as well was another one I watched over and over again. Even Mannequin over and over again.

I wasn’t expecting you to say Mannequin.

I just think, again, it sort of had a fantastical element. As a child, your imagination is so alive. But the fact that it’s both imaginative and grounded, I think is the thing that really drew me as a child because that’s where you’re at when you’re a kid. Like my eight year-old daughter, when she’s playing with her toys or whatever, there is a whole entire universe she has created. And when I try to play with her, with her toys, the amount of times she goes, “No dad, that’s not right. That’s not what she wants.” Because she has a whole set of rules of how her universe, that she has built for her toys, is. But she’s playing with them on a real table, on a real sofa. And that’s what I think you have to do with those kinds of films that don’t have bloated budgets.

You have to find a way to be both imaginative and grounded, because you can’t suddenly go into intergalactic space or decide you’re just going to have aliens or monsters manifesting throughout the whole movie. You can’t do that. So you have to be more imaginative, in a sense. And that’s why I was drawn to those kinds of films. Anyway, and as you get older, I think you like being reminded of where you were at with the mindset of a child. Especially in times that are quite tough, because that, in a sense, is still a part of you. But the trials of life sort of dims that, I should say. And it’s always wonderful to step back into that space.

I am imagining you catching up on all these movies in 1989, watching The Goonies and Stand By Me and even The NeverRnding Story, and just thinking, wow, parents in the United States let their kids do really dangerous things.

No! I was quite the opposite! I felt parents of the United States were cool. I wanted to go there! I wanted to live there one day and I wanted to raise my children there, and that was exactly what I did about 20 years later. [Laughs] So yeah, that is what I thought.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Shaq and Charles Barkley don’t always see eye to eye when it comes to basketball analysis, or any number of unrelated topics. It’s part of what makes Inside the NBA such compelling television. The pair have a long history together, and watching them bicker and hurl idle threats at one another is par for the course on any given segment.

But there was a time when their feud was significantly less friendly. During the late 90s, Shaq and Chuck were bitter on-court rivals, and things finally came to a head during a Rockets-Lakers game in 1999 when Chuck threw the ball off Shaq’s head and set off a huge scuffle between two of the NBA biggest — literally and figuratively — personalities.

Miraculously, no one was seriously injured. But it took intervention from the family matriarchs to make sure there wasn’t any lingering resentment between the two, as Shaq explained during a recent appearance on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. (Transcript via People.com)

O’Neal, who said that the fight with Barkley, 57, “wasn’t real,” returned to the locker room after the tussle and received an unexpected phone call.

“So on two-way was my mom and Charles Barkley’s mom,” he said, adding that Glenn, who died in 2015 at age 73, “was a lovely, beautiful woman.”

“And I was like, ‘Hello?’ and she’s like, ‘This is Charles’ mom and your mom’s on the phone too.’ ” O’Neal recalled. “I was like, ‘Yes ma’am, how are you?’ She said, ‘Y’all need to stop. I already talked to Charles. He’s gonna meet you in the hallway. Y’all need to stop and hug. Y’all are two of the greatest players in the world, we don’t want y’all fighting in front of the kids, y’all stop that.’ “

And this isn’t the first time Shaq’s mom has had to intervene to stop a feud that was getting out of hand. Shaq has had many targets in his Shaqtin-a-Fool segment over the years, but none so frequent as one JaVale McGee, who became a fixture on the show for years. However, as their tiff got increasingly nasty on social media, Shaq’s mother once again stepped in and demanded that her son leave JaVale alone. There’s mounting evidence that she’s only one who could ever even dream of containing Shaq.

This Is Paris, a YouTube documentary that has over four million views in less than a week, claims to tell “untold true story” behind the real Paris Hilton, “and the iconic character she created.” That’s the one who hosted The Simple Life with Nicole Richie, and released the banger “Stars Are Blind,” and defined the turn-of-the-century “famous for being famous” celebrity. The two Hiltons are supposedly so unlike (and this image rehabilitation so questionable) that you probably haven’t even heard the real Paris’ voice.

“This entire time, I have been playing a character so the world has never really truly known who I am,” Hilton said on Australian morning talkshow Sunrise about her made-up “baby voice” (with major vocal fry). “The real me is actually someone who is brilliant and I’m not a dumb blonde, I’m just really good at pretending to be one.” She decided to drop the “fake voice” because “I just felt like it was time for the world to finally know who I was. I feel like I’ve been through so much and [there are] so many misconceptions and just preconceived notions about me.” You can hear it in the interview below:

And in This is Paris when Hilton is in a recording booth trying out different voices.

You know what this means? Time to-record “Stars Are Blind” in the real voice.

(Via Newsweek)

Ever since LeBron, D-Wade, and Carmelo became aficionados, NBA stars have enjoyed a steadily deepening relationship with wine. At this point, there are some serious wine connoisseurs in the league — both on the court and in the front offices. Steph Curry has a private label. So does CJ McCollum. Pelican’s small forward Josh Hart has created a “J Hart Cellars” Instagram account.

This love of wine runs so deep that it quickly seeped deep into the NBA Bubble down in Florida. Last month, ESPN reported that several players had cases of wine and even wine fridges shipped to their isolated, temporary homes. Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum basically converted his hotel room into a de facto wine cellar by keeping his room temp at around 60°F when he was in the room and closer to 50°F when he wasn’t there. All of this to keep his 80-plus bottles of wine at the right temp for storing and, of course, enjoying. That may seem like a bit of an extreme, but McCollum knows his stuff and has impeccable taste. His McCollum Heritage ’91 is perpetually sold out.

So what’s did people sip back when the NBA Bubble was a little more crowded? We did some digging and found some seriously hardcore bottles floating around Orlando. Good news — they’re not all inaccessible. There are a fair number of bottles that you can actually get your hands on without destroying your bank account. Naturally, there are also plenty of bottles in the Bubble that cost a month’s rent to drink. Below, we collected ten NBA Bubble bottles that range from completely affordable to “you need a million dollar a year contract to think about buying regularly.”

Cheurlin Champagne Brut Speciale

ABV: 12%
Region: Champagne, France
Average Price: $45

The Wine:

The NBA has pulled this bottle officially for birthday celebrations in the Bubble. The sparkling wine also happens to be the wine of Hall of Famer and former persona non grata of the Dream Team, Isiah Thomas.

The juice is 70 percent Pinot and 30 percent Chardonnay grapes. It’s aged for up to three years in Champagne, France and has been winning awards since 2017 for its exceptional quality.

Heitz Cellar 2013 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

ABV: 14.5%
Region: Napa Valley, California
Average Price: $50

The Wine:

This bottle popped up on Josh Hart’s side Instagram handle which, as we mentioned, is solely devoted to the wine he’s drinking in the Bubble (and beyond) throughout the week.

This Napa classic is a solid and very well-respected cabernet. The juice is considered a prime example of how good Napa cabs can be when done well. It’s also a bottle that’s not outlandishly expensive. This is probably the best bottle to try if you want to drink along with your favorite ballers.

Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey 2017 St. Aubin “Cuvée Marguerite”

ABV: 13%
Region: Burgundy, France
Average Price: $65

The Wine:

NBAbubblelife has been giving IG followers an inside view of the Bubble’s fishing trips, barbershop visits, bowling lanes, and wine nights. This re-post from a Josh Hart cellar dive faturing some seriously stellar French wines.

This French heavy-hitter is an equal measure blend of grapes from each Les Combes, en Créot, and Les Perrières plots in Burgundy. The wine is then barrel-aged in 350-liter (92-gallon) barrels. The expression was named after vintner Pierre-Yves Colin’s grandmother, Marguerite, who passed away right before the 2016 frost (the beginning of the picking season).

Caymus Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

ABV: 14.5%
Region: Napa Valley, California
Average Price: $90

The Wine:

Evidently, Boban Marjanovic sent Tobias Harris this bottle for his birthday just in case that bottle of bubbly the league sent wasn’t enough.

This is probably the most easily “gettable” wine on the list, especially if you’re on the West Coast. The juice is a mix of Cab grapes from eight areas of Napa which dials in the terroir and local-feel of this wine.

Yao Ming Cabernet Sauvignon 2014

ABV: 14.6%
Region: Napa Valley, California
Average Price: $100

The Wine:

Royce O’Neale started off his Friday night right with some red in a paper cup from Yao Ming’s California operation.

Eight-time NBA All-Star Yao Ming’s wine is another classic California red from Napa. The wine is a blend of 90 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, five percent Merlot, three percent Cabernet Franc, and two percent Petite Verdot grapes. The wine is then transferred to French oak where it spends 18 months mellowing.

Château Léoville Poyferré 2010 St-Julien

ABV: 14%
Region: Bordeaux, France
Average Price: $160

The Wine:

Back in the Josh Hart Cellars, we had to ping a couple of more of these bottles. So here we go.

This big wine from Bordeaux scores damn near perfect numbers from professional wine reviewers. It’s a blend of 56 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 34 percent Merlot, seven percent Petit Verdot, and three percent Cabernet Franc. The bottle is expected to age for up to 30 to 40 years before it peaks (that’s sometime between 2040 and 2050).

Domaine Coffinet-Duvernay Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru ‘Les Blanchots Dessus’

ABV: 13%
Region: Burgundy, France
Average Price: $195

The Wine:

This white is 100 percent Chardonnay hand-harvested from the lower sections of limestone-rich rolling French hills. The winemakers take their time and utilize old school oak barriques for fermentation with little to no fussing. The wine is then aged for 15 months in oak.

Rhys Vineyards Skyline Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir

ABV: 14%
Region: Santa Cruz, California
Average Price: $180

The Wine:

Hart also posted that he, JJ Redick, TJ McConnell, and Doug McDermott were getting down on the next two bottles on this list.

This much-beloved wine takes a very unique approach to the process of grape to glass. The Skyline Vineyard in the Santa Cruz mountains is very rocky terrain — adding a unique terroir to the fruit. Then, the wine is fermented in whole clusters. That means the grapes are kept intact with their, well, cluster — stems and all — without going through a destemming contraption. This is believed to add more tannic notes and structure to the final product.

Château Pape Clément Graves Pessac-Léognan 2009

ABV: 14%
Region: Bordeaux, France
Average Price: $240

The Wine:

This is another investment bottle that won’t really peak for another ten years or so. The wine in the bottle is a blend of 50 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 45 percent Merlot, and five percent Cabernet Franc, placing it squarely in the classic territory of reds from Bordeaux.

Masseto Tenuta dell’Ornellaia

ABV: 14.5%
Region: Tuscany, Italy
Average Price: $600

The Wine:

According to ESPN, this bottle was sent to every team as a gift — which is a hell of gift. A bottle of Masseto is very much a show-off bottle of wine, even in the NBA Bubble.

This 100 percent Tuscan Merlot is often called the perfect expression of that grape in the world. If you have $600 (or much more) to test that theory, let us know if this really is the best Merlot out there.

“What’s ‘the Holocaust’?” my 11-year-old son asks me. I take a deep breath as I gauge how much to tell him. He’s old enough to understand that prejudice can lead to hatred, but I can’t help but feel he’s too young to hear about the full spectrum of human horror that hatred can lead to.

I wrestle with that thought, considering the conversation I recently had with Ben Lesser, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor who was just a little younger than my son when he witnessed his first Nazi atrocity.

It was September of 1939 and the Blitzkrieg occupation of Poland had just begun. Ben, his parents, and his siblings were awakened in their Krakow apartment by Nazi soldiers who pistol-whipped them out of bed and ransacked their home. As the men with the shiny black boots filled burlap sacks with the Jewish family’s valuables, a scream came from the apartment across the hall. Ben and his sister ran toward the cry.

They found a Nazi swinging their neighbors’ baby upside down by its legs, demanding that the baby’s mother make it stop crying. As the parents screamed, “My baby! My baby!” the Nazi smirked—then swung the baby’s head full force into the door frame, killing it instantly.

This story and others like it feel too terrible to tell my young son, too out of context from his life of relative safety and security. And yet Ben Lesser lived it at my son’s age. And it was too terrible—for anyone, much less a 10-year-old. And it was also completely out of context from the life of relative safety and security Ben and his family had known before the Nazi tanks rolled in.

ZACHOR Foundation

Before I spoke with Ben, I had prepared myself for what I was going to hear. The baby story was brutal, but I’d read enough Holocaust stories to expect all manner of horror. The Jews being rounded up and taken to the woods to dig their own graves before being shot and thrown into them. The cattle cars crammed with bodies so tightly no one could move—where men, women, and children languished in hunger and thirst, standing in their own excrement for days. The Nazi commandant who made every 10th prisoner in line hold their body over a sawhorse and take 25 lashes, shooting in the head anyone whose body touched the sawhorse through the beating.

The concentration camps, the death camps, the gas chambers. I was prepared for all of that.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that Ben Lesser’s dad was a chocolate maker. He was one of the first, Ben explained to me proudly, to make chocolate-covered wafer cookies, like a Kit-Kat, only he made his in the shape of animals.

Hearing Ben describe the way he and his siblings would excitedly run to their father when he got home from work, knowing he’d have pockets full of chocolate for them—that was the detail that did me in. The simple sweetness of it. The fact that their life was so delightfully normal before it turned into a nightmare. That backdrop made hearing about the horrors Ben witnessed and experienced from age 10 to 16 all the more heinous.

ZACHOR Foundation

Ben was 15 when he and two of his siblings were shoved into a cattle car and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex where Nazis systematically murdered 1.1 million people in five years. When they exited the car, a man was directing people to go left or right. Ben, a strong young man, was sent to the right with his uncle and cousin—they were going to work. His sister Goldie and younger brother Tuli were sent to the left.

Ben only learned that they’d gone straight to the gas chambers when a guard later explained, with a twisted sense of satisfaction, that the ash gently falling from the sky was made up of the bodies of the workers’ loved ones.

By the time the war ended, Ben would lose his parents, three of his four siblings, and countless extended family members and friends to Hitler and his followers’ hatred. His older sister, Lola, was the only member of his immediate family to survive.

The stories Ben shared from Auschwitz-Birkenau, from the “Death March” to Buchenwald, and from Dachau—where he would ultimately be liberated when the war ended—are every bit as horrific as everything I’ve described so far. It would take far more space than I have here to share it all, but Ben has written it all down—the tragedy and suffering as well as the miracles that occurred both during and after the war—in his autobiography.

But simply putting it all down in writing wasn’t enough.

ZACHOR Foundation

“In my mind there are questions that have never been answered,” Ben writes in the opening of his memoir. “You might be surprised to learn that my first unanswered question is not, Why did that insane Hitler try to destroy the Jewish People? Instead, my first unanswered question is, Why did the so-called sane world stand by and let this Genocide happen?

“Having experienced the savagery of genocide first-hand as a child, while living in a supposedly modern, cultured, European country, I also have two additional questions: One, What are the circumstances and choices that led up to this and other genocides? And two: What must we do to prevent it from happening again? Anywhere. Because, sadly, as the old saying tells us, ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’”

These are the questions Ben seeks to help all of us answer as time takes us further and further away from the Holocaust. Ben is one of a handful of survivors who are able to share first-hand experiences as Jews under Nazi terror—a fact he was keenly aware of when he founded the ZACHOR Holocaust Remembrance Foundation in 2009. “ZACHOR” means “REMEMBER,” and the purpose of the foundation is to make sure the world never forgets the lessons of the Holocaust or the millions of individual lives that were taken there.

The story of the Holocaust isn’t just in the masses of humanity killed, but in the individual stories of those who survived. For years, Ben spoke at schools, sharing his story with young people. At 91, Ben has retired from the school circuit, but he’s not slowing down in his efforts to teach the lesson of what hate can lead to.

ZACHOR has just launched an online Holocaust curriculum—the first to be created and facilitated by and through the firsthand testimonial of a survivor. Ben told Upworthy that he wanted to create a curriculum that would be free and easy for teachers to access so there would be no excuse for schools not to teach about the Holocaust.

Considering the study findings that came out today, Ben’s curriculum could not be more timely.

The 50-state survey of young adults in the U.S. found that nearly two-thirds were unaware that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, nearly 1 in 4 say they think the Holocaust is a myth or that it’s exaggerated, and approximately 1 in 10 had either had never heard of it, didn’t think it happened at all, or—perhaps most alarmingly—think Jews were responsible for it.

Clearly, we need to be doing a better job of educating our kids about the Holocaust. If we don’t, the online disinformation machine will lead them to believe it was all a hoax.

The Zachor Holocaust Curriculum consists of eight lessons, which interweave Ben’s personal story with facts about the Eastern European part of the war, how Hitler and the Nazis operated, and the Holocaust in general. It includes written content, fact inserts, photographs, and videos. It is free to register to use, and available to anyone with internet.

Perhaps the most unique element of the ZACHOR curriculum is the interactive component. Ben has created a Storyfile—a mix of artificial intelligence and hologram technology that will enable people to ask Ben questions and get answers long after he’s no longer here. He spent hours answering thousands of questions, all of which was recorded from various angles and put into the Storyfile program, so people will always be able to hear Ben’s answers to their questions from his own mouth.

Ben’s foundation has also launched an anti-bullying campaign called “I SHOUT OUT.” Anyone can go to the website i-shout-out.org and share what they shout out for—equality, peace, human rights, etc.—to let the world they stand against hatred.

I asked Ben what is the main message he wants people to take from the horrors of the Holocaust. He said, “It’s very simple. Stop the hatred.”

We all need to listen and heed Ben’s words. Even just this five-minute video in which he shares how the Holocaust got started is worth viewing and sharing with our kids.

3 – Ben’s Testimony. It all started with hatred.

youtu.be

It may be a few more years before I share the full scope of Nazi cruelty with my son. But I will absolutely make sure that he knows what happened during WWII, about the millions of lives destroyed by hatred, and how, as Ben says, “One person with the gift of gab could turn the minds of millions.”

Zachor indeed. We will remember.

Same-sex marriage is legal in America and these days 63% of all Americans support the idea. Ten years ago, it was still a controversial issue among Democrats, but in 2019, 79% say they support same-sex marriage.

The issue played a big role in the Democratic primary for the Delaware’s House of Representatives 27th district race. On September 15, Eric Morrison defeated incumbent Earl Jacques in a landslide and gay rights was a central issue.

In 2013, Jaques voted against same-sex marriage and refused to vote yes or no on banning gay conversion therapy in the state. On the other hand, Morrison is a gay drag queen who performs under the name Anita Mann and is very progressive on LGBTQ issues.

The difference between the Democrats’ views came to a head last October when Jacques attacked Morrison for holding a fundraiser while in drag.

“You wonder what the point is. You can have fundraisers, I don’t care about that. But dressing in drag? Really?” Jaques said.

“I’m not sure he represents the people who attend those places of religion [in the area]. If he’s actually having a fundraiser in drag, I don’t think those churches would endorse that,” he continued.

Here’s Morrison off stage:

Jaques was criticized by fellow Democrats for his comments by House Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf, House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst, and House Majority Whip Larry Mitchell in a joint statement.

“We have spoken with Rep. Jaques and expressed our disagreement with what he said,” the statement read. “We appreciate that he has apologized for his comments.”

Jaques apologized saying, “It is wrong to attempt to pass judgment or impose one person’s belief structure onto others. My job as a state representative is to represent all constituents of the 27th District, regardless of gender, race, creed, orientation or identity, period.”

Morrison responded by saying that he “very much” appreciated the apology but took the opportunity to highlight Jaque’s history of being anti-LGBT rights.

“Unfortunately, this does not change the fact that Rep. Jaques voted against same-sex marriage in 2013, and refused to vote yes or no on banning the barbaric practice of conversion therapy for Delaware’s LGBT minors in 2013,” Morrison said, those votes trouble me today and will always trouble me

On Tuesday, voters came out in droves for Morrison, who defeated the incumbent 61% to 39%

Early Wednesday morning, after his victory was confirmed, Morrison tweeted: “Last night, we won our primary election with a spread of over 22%! Thank you to everyone who supported our campaign in any way, big or small.”

Now, Morrison is turning his eyes to his competition on November 3.

“This isn’t over! Before we know it, the general election will be here on November 3, and we face two candidates—a Republican and a libertarian,” he Tweeted. “But for today, we celebrate and we THANK YOU for your support. I look forward to taking every remaining step of this exciting journey with you.”

If you’re a basketball fan, there’s a non-zero chance you’ve heard of St. Benedict’s Preparatory Academy. An all-boys Benedictine prep school established in 1868 in Newark, New Jersey, St. Benedict’s has earned a reputation for being one of the nation’s top high school basketball programs, even before current head coach Mark Taylor took over in 2011. Alums like J.R. Smith and Lance Thomas have made it to the league, but few schools in the nation can match the years-long record of success boasted by the Gray Bees.

The program finds itself under the spotlight in Benedict Men, a new docuseries from Quibi that features Steph Curry as an executive producer and a presenter. On and off the court, viewers are give a glimpse into life at St. Benedict’s, a school that is oftentimes made up of students from underprivileged backgrounds. Still, whether they have NBA aspirations or not, everyone is expected to uphold the school’s motto: “Whatever hurts my brother hurts me; whatever helps my brother helps me.”

Benedict Men makes its debut on Quibi on Monday, Sept. 21. But before then, Dime has your exclusive first look at the series’ trailer.

Additionally, we sat down with Jonathan Hock, the Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who directed this project, to discuss the film, Curry’s involvement, and what it is about basketball that makes it such a great vehicle for storytelling.

How did you get brought on board with this project?

Mark Ciardi is one of the executive producers and he’s a producer who’s done a million amazing, esteemed projects from Miracle to Invincible, Secretariat, and he’s also done some great things in documentaries. We’ve crossed paths over 30 for 30 and have been looking for an opportunity to collaborate. And he was working with the folks at Whistle Sports to try to develop even what they call “premium content,” meaning just more like the kinds of documentaries you might see on ESPN or HBO. And when he told me about St. Benedict’s, I knew about St. Benedict’s, I didn’t know as much as I was about to learn about them, but I was very intrigued.

We went out in August to shoot a couple of days at the end of what’s their summer session. It just blew my mind between Father Ed, this radical old monk who came out of the ’60s all full of fire and piss and vinegar, and the kids were so interesting and so diverse. You had the African kids, you had the Newark kids, you had the suburban kids, and yet they’re so incredibly talented. They were just so interesting to me, the kids. You work with kids sometimes and they’re shy and you’re just an old guy and they’re not too comfortable around you, but these young men were incredibly self-possessed and had a way of dealing with one another and a way of being on camera that was just really compelling and the energy in the school was extraordinary. We knew we had a great project on our hands after those two days and cut together some footage that we’d shot and took it around and happy to find a home with Quibi.

You mentioned that you knew a little bit about St. Benedict’s going in. I feel like if you live in the Tristate area — St. Benedict’s, St. Anthony, St. Patrick — you know the big basketball programs. Was there anything specific based off of the knowledge that you had that you were eager to highlight as you got this project and then started seeing this project through?

Mark shared with me the 60 Minutes piece about Saint Benedict’s and Father Ed, that had aired a few years before, and that was something that I hadn’t known about. I just knew about them for basketball and J.R. Smith and then the other great teams that they’ve had. But what I saw in the 60 Minutes piece was this really radical approach to education and the education of young men of color, based on the idea that the biggest issue they have is living in a world that denies them their own value. That denies them their own definitional authority, meaning young Black and Brown men never get to set the terms of their own existence and never get to be trusted as witnesses to their own existence.

Then here was a school that was dedicated to not only giving them a voice that is heard, but giving them control over how their school is run, how the daily life of the school unfolds is determined by the students at St. Benedict’s. So you are handing the students the reins, to a large degree, in their own lives, and that’s something that young people rarely get anywhere and young people of color never get. I sensed that would be sort of just fascinating to examine, but how that would happen once they go inside the gym doors, because a sports team is a place where the individual voice has to be sublimated to the collective good. This was going to be a challenge to say the least. It was going to be a conflict more than likely, and sure enough, that’s what happened.

That’s why it was super interesting for me, because I knew that this core philosophy of the school and their motto, “Whatever hurts my brother hurts me,” but that’s not really true in youth basketball. Like, my buckets help me, your buckets don’t do nothing for me. That’s the unfortunate reality of youth basketball, and that’s not what they’re trying to teach or coach at St. Benedict’s. A real interesting little laboratory of basketball and society.

There’s a line that I really like in the trailer, “We’re an advanced placement course in basketball.” Looking back in the doc now that you’ve created it, what does that mean to you?

“We’re an advanced placement course in basketball” means that you are in high school, but we are going to treat you as if you are in college and you are going to have a set of expectations that you haven’t had before as a 16 or 17 year old. You are going to be treated as men and we are going to have expectations about you as if you are a man. So you better grow up and get with the program, and that’s a challenge with 16 year olds.

How important was it for you to find that balance between highlighting this power basketball program and what it means for the kids in the program who oftentimes come from backgrounds that, as Steph said, are getting opportunities that are historically denied to them?

That’s the essence of what we were looking for and what we were interested in. This idea of opportunity vs. false hope, and this idea of shared responsibility vs. individual desire. The idea that these kids were expected to be part of both a high-octane, high-performance basketball program, and a high-octane, high-performance educational program, they were going to have to make the accommodations in their lives that would be very difficult for even very privileged young people. For most of these players, they’re not coming from a position of privilege. They’re coming from a whole range of positions, some struggling and their families are struggling, and the family’s hope is in the future of the young men as basketball players and the burden that they have to carry, and the three pillars of their lives: the athletic, the academic, and the family. What a burden they carry. Not a lot of fun, not a fun teenagehood.

Can you run me through Steph’s role in this project?

As executive producer, Steph and Erick [Peyton], and the folks at Unanimous were our guardian angels. What we did was shared content with them to make sure we’re getting the basketball right, for one thing, because Steph Curry is not going to put his name on something where the basketball isn’t right.

Also, Stephen Curry is a really sort of deeply feeling person. It wasn’t that long ago in his life that he was an underdog high school kid. He wasn’t poor, his father was a well-paid NBA athlete, but he was undersized and under-appreciated and underestimated. So that underdog idea, that underdog feeling that he embodied for so long before he became an MVP in the NBA, he spent his life as an underdog.

I think the other thing about him is that he’s a very principled person and it comes from a place of deep faith. St. Benedict’s and Father Ed also coming from a place of deep faith and commitment to a very meaningful sense of morality, a very strong moral compass. As our guardian angels, Stephen and the folks at Unanimous were helping us to keep the right things in focus, because when you shoot 80, 90 days, you get all kinds of stories and all kinds of amazing content that you want to get in there, but we needed to stick to our core story, and those guys really helped with that.

I think with Stephen himself doing the on-camera introductions to the series and an episode in the middle of the series, and later in the series sort of introducing the first act, second act, and third act. I hope it brings the story we were hoping to tell into focus for the audience in a way that not just clues them in, but gets them excited about how profound this all really turned out to be.

You’ve done a ton of sports documentaries in your career, particularly a number of revered basketball documentaries, The Dominican Dream, Unguarded, I have friends who to this day say people need to watch Through the Fire. What is it about sports and particularly basketball that makes them such a great medium for telling stories?

Well, the key to the good sports documentaries in my estimation is that they’re never about the sport. And yet at the same time, the sport itself does provide a crucible for our characters to endure, to pass through, and to take the measure of themselves as individuals. Survive and Advance, and Unguarded, and Dominican Dream, and Through the Fire, certainly — that’s what Through the Fire the title of it was, because these kids really go through that crucible. Basketball, I think, is so great because the characters are so bare, literally. Football makes for beautiful stories and films, but you don’t see the players really when they’re playing, right? Baseball, you’re really far from the players when they’re playing and the action is not as dynamic.

Boxing is the closest thing to basketball in filmmaking because you really see the person as close to naked as possible, and that’s what you’re looking to do in a documentary, you’re looking to reveal the inner truth of a person, and the more exposed they are in their chosen path of performance, the more clearly you can see them and the more truth can be revealed about them.

I think that’s part of why basketball stories tend to be a little more interesting, and to be honest, the African-American story — I know Unguarded certainly wasn’t an African-American story and Surviving and Advance was not a particularly African-American story, although certainly a lot of African-American characters and important players in that — but the-African American story and the challenges of making it in this American society as an African-American person is a much more difficult, and a much more challenging, and a much more interesting predicament for a story. Because every time a young Black man emerges from a situation, whether it’s Coney Island or Newark, he is needing to overcome so much more than just getting good grades and getting some buckets. He’s battling against institutional racism and deeply-seated, conscious and unconscious mistreatment by the mainstream sector of society.

To see young African-American men struggle through that, I think to be honest, that’s something that’s special about basketball stories that you tend to get more in basketball stories than you do in some of the other sports.

Thanks to the headline-grabbing reunion of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston and an impressive line-up of A-list stars, the charity table read of Fast Times at Ridgemont High already had people’s attention as the virtual table read kicked off on Thursday night. But nobody could’ve been prepared for what exactly that reunion entailed.

Not only did Pitt and Aniston have to act out the classic pool scene where a bikini-clad Phoebe Cates catches a pants-less Judge Reinhold watching her get out of the pool, but the embarrassing self-love moment was narrated by Morgan Freeman. After the allure of seeing Pitt and Aniston together again died down, Freeman started trending on Twitter for the narration, and frankly, he deserves all of the awards for this level of craftsmanship. In the words of Julia Roberts at the end of the table read, “Morgan Freeman, you’re the MVP!”

You can watch the scene below:

Organized by comedian Dane Cook, the virtual table read raised funds for CORE and REFORM Alliance, and it boasted an all-star cast that included Pitt, Aniston, Freeman, Roberts, Sean Penn, Shia LaBeouf, Matthew McConaughey, Henry Golding, Jimmy Kimmel, and John Legend. As for what prompted Cook to slap together the event, here’s what he told People:

“It’s hard to not have those really great, dare I say, holy s—, entertainment moments, which we have summer to summer — the big movie or the big moment. And when I didn’t see that was happening, when I started seeing the films that I was anticipating most move out of the summertime spot, I thought, man, wouldn’t it be great if somehow, someway we could still create a version of that moment? And I think we have the chance to do that, which is so damn cool.”

According to Cook, Jennifer Aniston was particularly “gung-ho” about the project, and once Julia Roberts was in the bag, he knew this could “go the distance.”

(Via People)

The best new hip-hop albums coming out this week include projects from Armani Caesar, Curren$y and Harry Fraud, GQ, Kamaiyah and Capolow, Lil Tecca, Problem, and Toosii.

Last week’s temporary reprieve from new releases was a nice break — and a needed one — but it’s back to business as usual as mid-September brings a minor blizzard of new projects in hip-hop. It’s a big week for discovery, as the list is dominated by new and independent artists, but there are a few major gems to look into as well.

Here are all the best new hip-hop albums coming out this week.

Armani Caesar — The Liz Tape

The debut album from the “First Lady” of Griselda Records is a departure from early songs like “Big Ole Bag” and “The Nasty Song,” bringing her style more in line with the core members of the Buffalo-based label. With the DJ Premier-produced “Simply Done” leading the way, Armani flexes her wordplay over a variety of sample-driven, traditionalist instrumentals that set her apart from the crowd, but she also shows she can rap over contemporary styles on songs like “Gucci Casket” with labelmate Conway The Machine.

Curren$y and Harry Fraud — The Director’s Cut

Another month, another project from the New Orleans underground rap vet. At this point, you know what you’re getting from both of these artists. The Director’s Cut appears to be a continuation of July’s The OutRunners, plugging in a variety of surprising collabs from the likes of Larry June, Snoop Dogg, Styles P, and Trippie Redd.

GQ — A Midsummer’s Nightmare

9th Wonder’s Jamla Records is on a roll in 2020 despite the pandemic. While Rapsody is clearly the star player, she’s long been surrounded by grounded vets like GQ and exciting rookies such as Reuben Vincent, both of whom are getting their chance to shine this year. While the 19-year-old Vincent dropped Boy Meets World this summer, Oakland native GQ is the next to step up to the plate. Fans won’t be disappointed; all his labelmates praise him as being one of the better lyricists in the crew, and he lives up to his reputation on his first project since 2017.

Kamaiyah and Capolow — Oakland NIghts

Up-and-coming Oakland spitter Capolow gets a timely co-sign from his hometown’s newly independent Kamaiyah. The Town hustle is evident on their quick-hitter, which is full of catchy, post-hyphy bops that will truly make listeners resent lockdown and all those jerks who refused to wear masks back in April. There’s a strong yin-and-yang chemistry between the two, who each have unique approaches to their party-rap instrumentals, making the project more than the sum of its parts.

Lil Tecca — Virgo World

NY native Lil Tecca debuted last year with the mega-hit “Ransom,” dropping his first mixtape We Love You Tecca toward the end of summer. Now, just a little over a year removed from that project, he follows up with the more polished Virgo World. To his credit, he seems much more enthusiastic this time around, while the pandemic provides the perfect cover for his aloof personality to allow the music to shine.

Problem — Coffee & Kush Vol. 2

Oh, another Compton rapper? Listen here, I had to put up with reading 600 words a month about random guys from New York no one outside the tri-state cared about for 20-plus years. You. Will. Deal. Anyway, Problem is way more than just another independent hustler on the rise after nearly a decade of high-quality releases, hit records, and collabs with the likes of local legend DJ Quik. Coffee & Kush refers both to Problem’s favorite indulgences and his latest business endeavor, the Green Hour coffee brand. With guests like Jack Harlow, Jay Rock, Freddie Gibbs, Snoop Dogg, and Terrace Martin, Problem is still the star of the show, speaking to his years of experience and magnetic personality. Give it whirl, because my city is the best.

Toosii — Poetic Pain

Uproxx’s Cherise Johnson spoke to the rising North Carolina rapper in July, highlighting his growing dominance of TikTok and foreshadowing his upcoming project, then titled After The Rain. Since then, Toosii’s rep has only grown, with his talent rising to meet the expectations.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

75-year-old Northern Irish music legend Van Morrison has been as productive as ever lately, as he has released eight albums over the past decade. The reception those projects enjoyed was mostly warm, but his next endeavor is more likely to ruffle some feathers: He’s planning to release a series of anti-lockdown songs.

Morrison said of the songs in a statement, “I’m not telling people what to do or think, the government is doing a great job of that already. It’s about freedom of choice. I believe people should have the right to think for themselves.”

BBC reports that Morrison will be releasing three songs in the near future, with the first of them, “Born To Be Free,” arriving next week. He sings on the track, “The new normal is not normal / It’s no kind of normal at all / Everyone seems to have amnesia / Don’t need the government cramping my style / Give them an inch, they take a mile.”

Meanwhile, he says on “No More Lockdown,” “No more lockdown / No more government outreach / No more fascist bullies / Disturbing our peace.” “As I Walked Out” also features the lyrics, “Well, on the government website from the 21st March, 2020 / It said COVID-19 was no longer high risk / Then two days later / They put us under lockdown.”

Northern Ireland’s health minister Robin Swann isn’t on board with the new songs, saying, “I don’t know where he gets his facts. I know where the emotions are on this, but I will say that sort of messaging is dangerous.”

This comes about a month after Morrison slammed the “pseudo-science” behind the coronavirus, writing on his website, “I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters, and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science, and speak up.”